Oil on cream wove paper, 1954, signed and dated at lower right, matted but not framed.

Sheet size 19 1/8 x 24 in.

Bill Hodges Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Greensboro, North Carolina (acquired from the above in the 1990s)

Norman Lewis was born and raised in Harlem, New York. After studying drawing and commercial design, he left the city to spend two years traveling the world as a merchant seaman, returning to New York in 1933. Once back in the city, Lewis studied and worked for a time in the Harlem studio of Augusta Savage.

Harlem remained Lewis’ home throughout his life. Greatly influenced by the artistic spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, his early work was more representational and in line with the social realists of the 1930s and 1940s. As he evolved, Lewis turned to abstraction and is often considered the only African American Abstract Expressionist.

Lewis’ lyrical and atmospheric paintings, many imbued with veiled references to his experiences as a Black man, were often overlooked during his lifetime. His paintings are being actively acquired by such prominent collections as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Minimal toning to sheet; minor crease to upper right corner and lower right corner; minor loss to corner tip at upper left; minor crease to upper left quadrant of sheet; dark ink mark to upper left edge of sheet.

$20,000 - 40,000